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FEBRUARY 25, 1971, VANCOUVER 8, B.C
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UBC Scientists
On Canada's
AGES TWO ANtftHREV
Tents of a UBC research team are dwarfed at the foot of a surging glacier being studied in the Yukon
New Goals for UBC Graduates
SEE PAGES SIX AND SEVEN
Britain's University of the Air
SEE PAGES EIGHT AND NINE PETER THOMPSON
In gathering material for the article beginning at right, Peter
Thompson, an assistant information officer at UBC,
discovered that the North is a bundle of contradictions to
most Canadians. In addition, he found that Canada is not
investing enough money in research on Northern problems.
His article discusses Canadian attitudes toward the North
and describes some of the research projects being carried
out there by UBC scientists.
THE NORTH
YIELDS UP
ITS SECRETS
THIS 30-foot exposed cross-section of Arctic terrain
is made up of massive ground ice in its lower section
and frozen soil containing an ice wedge, centre. The
photo, by Prof. Ross Mackay of UBC's geography
department, one of Canada's leading permafrost
2/UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971
experts, illustrates one of the main problems
associated with some northern construction, the
location and amount of ground ice. Unless special
measures are taken the ground ice may melt and
cause sinking of the surface.
WWK hen it comes to the North,
■ Canadians are schizophrenic. Most
■ of us identify with the mythology of
Fthe North though few of us have been
'there. We resent people of other
countries associating us with dog sleds
and igloos, yet we feel a secret attachment to these
symbols.
The North is our frontier and a large part of our
national ethos. It is part of the nostalgia Canadians
feel for their country and a large part of our future. It
is also a place where few of us want to go. Canadian
ambivalence to the North is perhaps best illustrated
by the contradictory ideas most of us have about it.
The North, we believe, breeds individual
self-sufficiency and is one of the few places left in the
world where survival of the fittest still appliesto man
himself. But we also believe that human survival in
the North depends on co-operation, on a highly
developed sense of community and sharing.
We think of the North as a vast wilderness where a
man can roam free from the restrictions of Southern
cities. And there is the other side of the coin, the idea
of the isolation of the North, the lonely outpost, the
solitary cabin as the refuge of civilization in the face
of desolation.
Another conventional wisdom has it that any
young man set on making his fortune should pack up
and head north. But we also say the North is for the
person looking for solitude and peace.
Even disinterested Canadians now share the notion
that the North will somehow play a special and
perhaps dominant role in Canada's destiny. Slowly we
are beginning to realize that ours is a North
country even though we may not yet see ourselvl
a Northern people.
The Canadian Arctic, the area roughly north of 60
degrees, is larger than Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and
the Atlantic provinces combined. It makes up 40 per
cent of the country. The geographic centre of Canada
is some 250 miles north of Churchill, an area as
remote to most Canadians as Uganda.
Canada and the rest of the world virtually ignored
the North until construction of the Distant Early
Warning Line in the early years of the Cold War. This
was the first introduction of technology to the North *
on a concerted scale. Though the DEW line was
obsolete before it was finished, it proved that
industrial man can function in the North.
What has made us aware of the North is recent
interest in the development of natural resoiuA^
Canada's Mackenzie Basin holds estimated poteWBjF-
reserves of 20 to 30 billion barrels of crude oil, 100
to 175 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and three to
five billion barrels of natural gas liquids.
Another 80 to 120 billion barrels of crude, 400 to
600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 12 to 18
billion barrels of natural gas liquids in potential
reserves lie beneath the Arctic islands, according to
the most recent figures of J.C. Sproule & Associates
of Calgary.
The sum — 100 to 150 billion barrels of crude,
500 to 775 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 15 to
23 billion barrels of natural gas liquids — is easily
the largest concentration of fossil fuels on the
continent. •>-
Proved crude oil reserves at the end of 1969
totalled 120 billion barrels in the U.S. — excluding
the Prudhoe Bay oil in Alaska, which may increase
the total by some 25 billion barrels — and 13 billion
barrels in Canada. Proved natural gas reserves at the
end of the same year were 640 trillion cubic feet for
the U.S. and 65 trillion cubic feet for Canada.
Iron ore deposits on Baffin Island are placed at
one billion tons of 70 per cent ore, the richest in the
world. This is not to mention minerals in the-
northern section of the rich Pre-Cambrian Shield. The
southern portion of the Shield has been yielding
minerals for decades.
These prospects thrill and frighten many
Canadians. Among our fears are pollution of the
North, social upheaval of indigenous people and
irreversible damage to the area's delicate ecosystems.
Political instability in Middle East petroleum *
countries and other natural resource areas of the
world is accelerating exploration of the North. A casual glance at population projections for the next
few decades, even assuming measures to control
population increase in North America and the rest of
the world, shows a future resource demand which
makes resource development of the North virtually
.inevitable.
■v
■" Besides, U.S. continental energy reserves are
running low. So the question isn't whether the North
is going to be developed or whether it's in the best
interests of mankind for it to be tapped. The question
is how it's going to be developed.
Will it be done without serious ecological mishap?
Will Indians and Eskimos come out of it as badly as
their ancestors during the westward expansion across
iCanada more than a century ago, only this time
appeased by an advance column of government
welfare cheques instead of missionaries?
Public concern over proper development of the
North is growing daily. For the few who may not
already know, petroleum companies plan to build a
$2 billion pipeline to carry two million barrels of
crude oil daily from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North
Slope to the port of Valdez 800 miles to the south.
From Valdez the oil would be shipped by tanker
down the B.C. coast to ports on the U.S. west coast.
One such port would be at Cherry Point in the State
of Washington, 30 miles south of Vancouver.
■*- The proposal has made the Arctic much more of a
.reality to the people of B.C. than to any other group
of Canadians. Many other Canadians demand wise
Northern development because the issue rasps the
nerve-ends of two growing and sensitive causes:
concern for the environment and nationalism. From
the ooint of view of Canadians, industrial damage to
th^^^rth is associated with molestation of national
symTJols and desecration of an area of Canada held
most spiritual, if only because so few of us have been
there.
The concern of British Columbians is more
ijrnmediate. It is the threat of oil spills washing the
shores of Victoria and Vancouver.
Canada's reaction to the need for more Arctic
research in the face of the big development push has
been weak and possibly reflects our ambivalence to
the North. The federal Department of Northern
.Development's total research budget to all Canadian
'universities was a mere $250,000 in 1969-70 (It
was during this period — the fall of 1969 — that
members of the House of Commons committee on
Indian Affairs and Northern Development flew north
to^wt the American tanker Manhattan, publicly
u^Pjning Canada's territorial claims in the North).
Yet Northern Development cut its research budget
to Canadian universities for 1970-71 to $200,000.
True, the Department has started an Arctic Land
Use Research Program and provided some $400,000
for it in 1970-71. Its research is mission-oriented and
is designed to solve specific, immediate problems. It
.won't touch basic research.
rperhaps half, or $100,000 of the $200,000
pMNorthern Development has distributed to
■Mthe universities this year, will go toward
^mission research. This means that roughly
$100,000 of the $600,000 the Department will
spend on research this year will go to basic
.research. It is only fair to point out that other federal
•^departments do sponsor research in the North, either
by their own employees or through universities.
Mission research is properly, perhaps even
desperately, needed in the North. But researchers,
including some involved in mission research, say that
not only is the total amount for both
mission-oriented and basic research too little, but that
•the mix between the two types of research is wrong.
Ten years from now, they say, crucial questions
will be asked which can't be answered because the
basic research which should begin now is not being
undertaken.
Without the basic research begun generations ago
into permafrost, mineral exploration of the North, let
alone development, would be impossible today. And
in spite of decades of meagrely financed permafrost
research, much more needs to be known on the
■eubject before oil, gas and mining companies can
^operate efficiently and safely.
Permafrost is ground that has been frozen
year-round for some years. If it has a high water
content and the surface melts, whatever is on top —
airport, oil rig, building or highway — sinks. Half of
Canada is covered by permafrost.
It seems that only two government scientists,
supported by three technicians in the Building
Research Division of the National Research Council,
are working full-time on permafrost research in
Canada. Only about 15 professors and students are
doing permafrost research in Canadian universities.
Consulting engineers with permafrost expertise are
rare.
Permafrost problems dog almost every aspect of
Northern development. In the Mackenzie River delta
and the North Slope of Alaska, where much drilling is
now being done, the amount of ice in the permafrost
has a great effect on seismic readings and is a
challenge to all construction, temporary or
permanent.
This isn't to mention the tremendous technical
and ecological challenge of getting the minerals out of
the ground and transporting them to southern
markets.
A pipeline from the Arctic gas and oil fields to
markets in central and eastern North America would
cross more than 1,000 miles of permafrost.
And this is only one aspect of Northern
development. It doesn't take into account
sociological, health or general ecological questions.
Because development is dependent on research,
neglect of Arctic research today will prevent proper
development in the future. One result will be a
smaller pool of scientists trained to grapple with
Northern problems.
Dr. John K. Stager, chairman of the University of
B.C.'s Committee on Alpine and Arctic Research, says
Northern research must be recognized as a special
entity. "Northern research is area-oriented and not
subject-oriented," he said.
"The only thing that many projects have in
common is that they take place in the North. Right
now applications for Northern research projects
compete with applications for programs in the south.
■».«**■ i'fe
DEAN IAN McTAGGART-COWAN
This is unfortunate because many Northern projects
just can't compete.
"Research in the south is more likely to be
year-round and carried out with easy access to all the
scientific and technical amenities of our universities
and cities. Northern projects can't match this and as a
result applications for grant money tend to be
disadvantaged. Besides, it costs more to go north.
"Funding for Northern research needs to be kept
separate. Otherwise research on permafrost, for
instance, will compete with southern pollution and
Indian and Eskimo sociological studies will compete
with urban renewal. And they can't.
"If what we know about Northern and Southern
Canada is considered as a ratio, the ratio will increase
to the advantage of the South and to the detriment of
the North. But the South will tend to depend more
and more on the North for its economic well-being
and even for its recreation, so anything that
handicaps the North will also prejudice the South."
TI he Committee on Alpine and Arctic
Research is one of about 10 groups in
Canadian universities doing Northern
research. The UBC organization has been
operating for 10 years and includes alpine
regions as part of its interests because large
parts of mountainous B.C. have similar climate,
vegetation and general ecology as the Northern
tundra.
This year the Committee received $23,000 from
Northern Development, its only source of funds. The
sum is one of the largest from Northern Development
to a Canadian university group for Northern research.
Industry so far hasn't sponsored any research through
the committee.
UBC bodies associated with the Committee so far
include the Departments of Botany, Geography,
Geology, Zoology, and Anthropology and Sociology;
the Faculties of Medicine, Dentistry and Education,
the School of Home Economics and the Institute of
Animal Resource Ecology.
The Committee was set up to help co-ordinate
Northern research and develop inter-disciplinary
programs for some graduate students working in the
North. It reports to the Dean of the Faculty of
Graduate Studies.
The Committee has sponsored research on
permafrost problems, ecology, glaciers, the nutrition
of Yukon Indians, the personality and occupational
histories of workers in remote mining camps, and
population studies on animal species.
Scientists associated with the committee warn
repeatedly that development of the North must be
done wisely to avoid threats to the amazingly delicate
ecosystems of the area. The dangers are potentially
more serious than anything we have encountered up
to now in the South.
Plant material in the North has a very short
growing life. It's often sparsely distributed. Some
plant species are rare. Soils are immature, are early in
their evolution and there is a lot of frozen water in
the ground in some areas. This makes for potential
soil erosion, soil loss and slumping.
The Arctic recovers unbelieveably slowly. "We
have come to realize that even the smallest research
or exploration expedition must virtually bring back
to the South all of its indestructible wastes," said
Prof. Ian McTaggart-Cowan, Dean of the Faculty of
Graduate Studies.
"What do you do with oil drums and other types
of metal containers? If the ground is frozen you can't
bury them. And you can't leave them there because
all the chemical processes that destroy relatively
indestructible materials in southern climates don't
work very fast up there."
Prof. McTaggart-Cowan, a zoologist with a long
association with the North, warned that the food
chain there is very short and involves fewer units than
in the South. Pollutants, for example, are apt to move
more quickly through an Arctic food chain than
through a southern one.
"We're discovering that the accumulators in the
food chain are units that tend to be long-lived.
Lichens, the moss-like vegetation in parts of the
Arctic, accumulate radiation fall-out to a much
greater degree than plants in southern latitudes where
the turnover of biological material is more rapid.
"Fall-out products have been found to a very high
degree in Arctic caribou. Fortunately they aren't of a
form or of sufficient concentration to be destructive
Please turn to Page Four
See NORTHERN RESEARCH
UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971/3 NORTHERN RESEARCH
Continued from Page Three
to humans, so far as we know today. But these things
are warnings of what we're up against."
Prof. McTaggart-Cowan is supervising a research
project on the ecological relationship between a pack
of timber wolves and its environment in Mount
McKinley National Park in Alaska.
The rigorous task of living in contact with the
wolves month after month is being done by Mr.
Gordon Haber, a Ph.D. student at UBC.
"We've chosen Mount McKinley because there is
very little forest growth and observation is easy," he
said. "Another reason is that this same pack has been
studied off and on for more than 30 years. And
though the food available to the pack is abundant,
their number has remained about the same.
"The question is, why is the size of the pack
stable? This is interesting from the point of view of
theoretical biology, but it's also extremely valuable
for our understanding of mechanisms in nature
regulating populations so they conform to the
capacity of the environment to support them."
He said there can be three or four females
in the pack yet it is very rare for more
than one litter to be born each year.
Information gathered so far indicates
that the dominant female in the pack
attacks the other females when they
come into heat and prevents them from mating. But
this alone doesn't account for the pack's stability.
"There were seven in the pack last year and the
dominant female had a litter of nine," he said. "The
male she mated with was the second male, not the
dominant one. He was the only one allowed into the
den when she was having the pups, eight blacks and
one tan.
"Not only the parents but the whole pack looks
after them until about Christmas when the pack and
the mother and father lose their responsibility
towards them. The pups are treated as any other pack
member, as a friend, and in the case of wolves it is as
a friend, just as we mean friends. Wolves are very
interesting animals with a highly developed social
organization.
"After Christmas the pups are left further and
further behind as the pack travels because they can't
keep up. One day last year the pack was followed for
more than 60 miles through snow over two very tall
peaks. Our previous experience suggests that only two
of those little fellows are alive by spring."
Prof. McTaggart-Cowan has two other high alpine
or Arctic projects going. Ph.D. candidate Manfred
Hoefs, working out of the Icefield Research Station
at Kluane Lake in the Yukon where the temperature
can go to 60 below, is studying the year-round
ecology of Dali sheep, the northernmost large animal
living in the mountains of western Canada.
The mountainside where the sheep are living is
instrumented with micrometeorological stations and
food eaten by the sheep has been mapped and
analysed. The project aims at finding the physical
limits for the survival of these animals.
The same kind of information is being sought in
the third project — the role of migration in the energy
cycle of bighorn sheep. The study is being carried
out by Mr. Daryll Hebert of Cranbrook who should
earn his Ph.D. this year. The data can be used for
planning parks and other refuges where the species
may survive destruction from an expanding human
population.
Bighorn sheep migrate down from mountains to
lower levels in winter. All large mountain animals do
this with the exception of bears, which escape winter
by hibernating. Prof. McTaggart-Cowan's project is
designed to find out exactly what the sheep gain by
migrating.
A group of captive bighorn sheep north of
Cranbrook have been put into "metabolic cages" —
pens built on stilts with a wire mesh at the bottom.
One group of sheep is fed the food that would be
available to them if they migrated and another group
the food that would be available to them if they
didn't migrate. All food, feces and urine is weighed
and analysed. A record is also kept of uneaten food
so that a complete energy balance is obtained.
Preliminary figures, he said, reveal that the sheep
fed the same type of food as a group of free,
migrating sheep get about three times as much
protein as non-migrating sheep.
He said there is a definite advantage to the sheep
in being able to migrate with the ebb and flow of the
seasons, gains in the form of important chemical
4/UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971
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Pingo, or ice-cored hill, is shown growing in a drained
Arctic Lake in this photo by Prof. Ross Mackay of
UBC's geography department. These unique hills are
associated with permafrost and occur in their greatest
nutrients as well as digestible energy. Any project to
manage or conserve a wild sheep population will have
to take this into account.
In the Department of Zoology, work on the
population dynamics of rock ptarmigan is providing
basic knowledge on the species and population
ecology in general. It also has some relevance to the
welfare of man.
The research done as part of a Ph.D. program by
Mr. John Theberge is part of a larger study under Dr.
J.F. Bendell to find out how populations are
regulated in nature. Dr. Bendell's group is also
working on woodland caribou, blue and ruffled
grouse, California quail and deer mice.
Dr. Bendell said the rock ptarmigan, a type Of
grouse, was chosen because it is an ideal bird for the
study. It occurs in large numbers on the open tundra
and is easy to see and catch throughout the year. The
bird is an important part of the natural economy of
the North. It provides food for man and animals. And
Indians and Eskimos use the bird's skin and plumage
in a variety of ways.
"More important," Dr. Bendell said, "the bird
undergoes a dramatic 10-year population cycle. The
population builds up over five years and then
decreases. This also happens in other species such as
the snowshoe hare. Lemmings have a three- to
four-year cycle.
"If we find out what causes the cyclic fluctuation
in ptarmigan we may have information that can be
applied to many other animals and even our own
situation. We all know that humans are the only
species on earth whose population is unregulated.
From what we see in studies of natural populations,
this can't go on forever.
"If we don't control our own numbers in a
rational way, natural forces will do it for us. Natural
constraints to population include starvation, disease
and high juvenile instability caused by social strife."
Mr. Theberge concluded from his part of
the rock ptarmigan research that the
population cycle isn't regulated by
external environmental factors such
as food supply, weather or disease,
| though these factors and others have
some effect. The main regulatory factor seems to be
the number of young birds that manage to survive the
winter. Proportionately more young live through
their first winter at the bottom of the cycle, when the
population is low, than at the top.
Mr. Theberge maintains that this is indirectly
related to changes in the social behavior of fall or
winter flocks. He hatched chicks in an incubator from
eggs laid during the increase and decrease of the cycle
and subjected the birds to tests to measure their
aggressiveness. The conditions in which the birds were
raised were kept constant throughout the study. He
says the aggressiveness of the chicks born when the
population was at its peak and decreasing was higher
number to the east of the Mackenzie River delta on
the edge of the Arctic Ocean. This particular pingo,
located near Tuktoyaktuk, is 90 feet high. It is
probably several thousand years old.
than during a year of increase.
"Mr. Theberge thinks that there is a change in the
intrinsic quality of the chicks in their eggs which
affects their aggressive behavior in winter flocks and
causes changes in their mortality," Dr. Bendell said.
He said another Ph.D. student began work on the
same problem this summer and is now observing fall
and winter rock ptarmigan flocks in the Yukon to see
if Mr. Theberge's conclusions hold in the field.
Work on the population dynamics of ptarmigan
began four years ago in co-operation with the Alaska
Department of Fish and Game and the University of
Alaska's Institute of Arctic Biology.
Prof. McTaggart-Cowan's concern for the Arctic
ecosystem is echoed by Prof. Vladimir Krajina of the
Department of Botany. He and his graduate students
have done fundamental work on tundra and alpine
plant communities. Projects have been undertaken on
Banks and Devon Islands, in the Mackenzie Delta and
in the British and Richardson Mountains.
"In many areas of the North, permafrost lies just
beneath the surface," Prof. Krajina said, "a condition
which could mean disaster if unbalanced.
"The shallow soil on top of the permafrost is
PROF. ROSS MACKAY ^^^e
called the active layer. It holds moisture for
vegetation growth. If the vegetation and soil are
disturbed the permafrost will melt, deepening the
active layer and moving the moisture in the soil
further from the surface, perhaps out of the reach of
plant roots. If this happens the chances are high that
the result will be a desert, since summer rainfall in
many parts of the Arctic is meagre.
"A vicious circle can occur. If the vegetation dies,
heat from the sun will be able to penetrate deeper
into the soil, melting the permafrost further so that
the area affected increases. This mechanism could
also occur if the vegetation is accidentally burned. If
this happens it might take 100 years or longer to
reverse the situation."
Prof. Ross Mackay of the Department of
Geography is one of Canada's leading authorities on
permafrost and- its problems. He began his work in
1951 when interest in the North was limited largely
to the military. Since 1954 he has been concentrating
on the Mackenzie River delta area and the adjacent
coastal area west to Alaska and east to Darnley Bay.
Prof. Mackay's kind of knowledge is proving vital
to Northern development. The type of permafrost
present and its distribution is critical to many
geophysical operations, construction projects and to
an understanding of surface disturbances. Permafrost
along the western Arctic coast is at least 1,000 feet
deep, he said, and is probably 1,600 to 1,700 feet
deep in some areas.
Though he doesn't take on consulting jobs, he
gives whatever help he can when asked. He usually
handles each week a number of requests from oil
companies, construction firms, consultants and the
federal government concerning permafrost problems.
n return for help given, major oil companies
operating in the Mackenzie delta have provided
logistic and other field support both winter and
summer to Prof. Mackay and his graduate
students. "There is a popular confusion over
permafrost and permafrost damage," he said.
"Permafrost is defined on a temperature basis and
refers to all materials at or below 32 degrees
Fahrenheit and not on how much water or ice is
present in the ground. Permafrost with a low ice
content near the surface presents little difficulty in
construction.
"Sand and gravel, for instance, usually have so
little associated ice that working with them in the
Arctic is not much different from working with them
in Vancouver. The same applies to the extensive
bedrock area of the Canadian Shield.
"But the ice content of many silts and clays is
h, so high that there is an excess of weiter when
ey are melted. Such soils are the typical cause of
construction problems in the North.
"The worst cases are where there are ice bodies —
in places more than 100 feet thick — lying just below
the ground surface. The town of Inuvik at the mouth
of the Mackenzie River is underlain with a great deal
of ground ice about 15 to 20 feet below the surface.
But proper construction methods have prevented it
from thawing."
Prof. Mackay and his Ph.D. students are involved
in a number of projects. Three students are
completing Ph.D. theses based on field studies at a
UBC field station near Reindeer Station. A former
student has done studies on the delta's environment
and vegetation, Mr. C. Peter Lewis is studying the
subdivision of delta lakes, and Mr. Michael W. Smith
is working on variations in ground temperatures.
Though the projects were undertaken as basic
science projects, some of the results are of applied
interest in seismic disturbance and related work.
Much attention is being given to the origin of
massive ice sheets that have formed naturally in the
ground. Drilling by oil companies has penetrated ice
sheets more than 100 feet thick in some places.
Portions of these ice bodies are frequently exposed
along the coast. Coastal erosion or melting of ice is
usually rapid. Just to the southwest of Tuktoyaktuk,
for example, one coastal stretch has been eroded back
1,000 feet since 1935.
Perhaps the most intriguing study of all deals with
the growth of "pingos," or ice-cored hills. Pingos may
reach a height of about 150 feet and there are well
over 1,000 of them, large and small, in the western
Arctic coastal belt.
Prof. Mackay is measuring the growth rate of
several "young" pingos. Two are about 20 years old,
two others are about 50 and one is perhaps 75 to 100
years old. One pingo grew about eight inches
vertically during 1969-70, another 4.5 inches and a
third three inches.
Nearly all pingos grow near the centres of the
bottoms of lakes which have drained. To find out just
how pingos grow. Prof. Mackay plans to drain an
Arctic lake and study the growth of a pingo in a
"natural" laboratory experiment.
He is also working on how the Mackenzie and
Laird Rivers mix. The Laird empties into the
Mackenzie at Fort Simpson some 700 miles south of
Inuvik.
"In June it may take at least 300 miles for mixing
of the waters of both rivers to become nearly
complete. This is an astonishingly long distance and it
surprised all of us. I'd hate to think of the effects of
an oil spill under these circumstances."
Dr. Garry C. Clarke is studying another fascinating
form of ice in the North — "surging" glaciers. A small
group of glaciers covering part of western Canada and
Alaska don't behave normally by travelling down a
valley in a steady progression.
Instead they surge, advancing rapidly for a short
period, churning up huge pieces of ice and rock, only
to stop and lie almost dormant for long periods
before the cycle begins again. The cycle is anything
of even the thickest glaciers doesn't melt. And
glaciers to the south don't surge because high summer
temperatures keep the bottom constantly melted.
Dr. Clarke, an assistant professor in the
Department of Geophysics, led a three-man team on
an intensive study of a surging glacier. The glacier
they chose was the Fox in the St. Elias Mountain
Range in the Yukon, the highest chain of mountains
in North America. The Fox, one mile wide and five
long, is located near other known surging glaciers.
Besides seismic soundings, gravity surveys and
other geophysical studies done over three summers,
the team put down through the ice electrical devices
called thermistors to measure ice temperatures at
various depths. The Fox was discovered to be
surprisingly thin, about 270 feet at its deepest point.
Preliminary results indicate that most of the ice at
the base is below the melting point. A small zone of
ice at the melting point was found and according to
the melting-base theory, an increase in ice thickness
will enlarge the "hot spot" and bring on the next
surge.
Dr. Clarke and his group were stationed in a tent
UBC zoologists are studying two types of large,
mountain animals living in alpine climates. Dali sheep,
below, are the most northerly-ranging of all large,
mountain animals in Canada. Two groups of captive
bighorn sheep, shown in top photo, are being studied
by UBC scientists near Cranbrook to determine the
role of migration in their energy cycle. The photos
were taken by Dr. Valerius Geist, a former Ph.D.
student of Dean Ian McTaggart-Cowan of the Faculty
of Graduate Studies. Dr. Geist is now with the
Environmental Sciences Centre of the University of
Calgary.
from 15 to 100 years, depending on the glacier. No
one knows what causes some glaciers to surge.
One theory is that the glacier melts at its base and
runs quickly for a short period of time on a
lubricating film of water. The temperature at the top
of the glacier is kept constant at below freezing by
the climate. And the base of the glacier receives a
constant amount of heat from the earth's crust. So
the top of the glacier is colder than the base and the
temperature increases with depth. But the
temperature increase is roughly constant over a
definite thickness of ice. This means that if the glacier
becomes thicker and the temperature at the top
remains the same, ice at the bottom of the glacier will
warm up.
When the base of the glacier melts, the glacier
surges. While surging it rapidly thins out and the base
temperature drops until the bottom freezes again,
locking it to the rock beneath. The glacier then enters
its stagnant or quiescent stage.
This may explain wny surging glaciers are located
along the same latitude. More northerly glaciers don't
surge because the climate is so cold that the bottom
camp next to the Fox some 50 miles from the Alaska
Highway and supplied by air from the Icefield
Research Station at Kluane Lake. The station is
headquarters of the Icefield Ranges Research Project,
a joint venture by the American Geographical Society
and the Arctic Institute of North America. A series of
research programs in the St. Elias Mountains have
been operated from Kluane Lake since 1961.
Data from the Fox study are being processed by
Dr. Clarke and his group using the University's
Computer Centre. If they establish that glaciers surge
because of melting ice at their bases, they will be able
to predict whether a glacier is about to surge or not
simply by putting down thermistors.
Meanwhile the Fox is being kept under aerial
observation. If there is any sign that it is beginning to
surge, Dr. Clarke wants to take temperature readings
from the probes left embedded in the ice. The
readings would have to be done quickly because the
surface of a surging glacier crevasses and heaves so
violently that travel across it is impossible. And once
the glacier began moving, the probes would almost
certainly be destroyed.
UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971/5 Energy and new ideas are percolating their way
through the UBC Alumni Association.
With more than 50 years of operation behind it, the
association is looking to the future in a mood of critical
self-analysis.
"The Alumni Association has been in existence for
more than a half century and I think it is tremendously
important that for the first time in its history the
concepts upon which it operates are being seriously
tested and challenged," said Mr. Jack Stathers, the
association's executive director.
In recent years the association has been carving out a
new role for itself as a two-way communications bridge
for the University.
Through a variety of new programs and approaches it
has been striving, on the one hand, to interpret to the
University the ideas of the community-at-large about
higher education and, on the other, to promote
understanding of the University's goals in the minds of
the public.
In part, the association's re-examination of its role is
the result of the increasing youthfulness of its
membership.
UBC now has 52,779 alumni and 50 per cent of them
have graduated since 1961. The average age of all UBC
graduates is 30 and the current association president, Mr.
Barrie Lindsay, is only 35.
TRADITIONAL ROLES
"The traditional roles of fund-raising and class
reunions are still important Alumni Association
activities," said Mr. Lindsay, "but certainly these
activities that in effect encourage nostalgia are not an
effective base for our future role in the UBC
community."
Every graduate of UBC is ipso facto a member of the
Alumni Association. Only about 6,000 graduates,
however, are actively involved in the association's many
endeavors.
In an effort to increase participation a representative
sample of the membership are being surveyed and asked
to outline what would motivate them to become more
actively involved.
The association has pledged itself to implement the
wishes of the membership to the greatest extent
possible. It is hoped that all UBC alumni asked, and
particularly the younger ones, will respond to the survey
and express their ideas about the role the association
should be playing.
Mr. Lindsay feels that to some extent the association
suffers from a "fund-raising, tea-partying" image. This
NEW IDEAS PERCOLATE
somewhat cynical assessment of the association's role is,
he believes, no longer valid, if it ever was.
These days the beverages served at the association's
more swinging social functions, designed to appeal to its
increasingly youthful membership, are almost anything
but tea.
And although the association fears that its
hat-in-hand image turns off a large number of its
members, its fund-raising activities nevertheless attain a
large measure of success.
In 1969, 10,118 alumni gave $288,891 to the
University. A total of 5,591 graduates gave $144,085 to
the Alumni Fund direct, another 763 gave $76, 896 to
the three Universities Capital Fund and other special
gifts from 3,764 donors totalled $67,910.
The total amount given annually by UBC graduates
has almost doubled since 1965 and Mr. Ian "Scotty"
Malcolm, director of the Alumni Fund, points out that
"the trend of giving has continued to rise despite the
economic climate and student unrest."
Conscious of the need for relevance, however, Mr.
Lindsay and the association's Board of Management,
which is among the youngest of any alumni organization
in the country, have already accomplished a major shift
in the association's role and are converting it into a vital
communications device for the University.
"I see the association's role as not only attempting to
maintain the interest of alumni in the University, but
also trying to foster more interest from the University to
the alumni and the community-at-large," he said.
Mr. Lindsay feels that the University suffers from
isolation because of the intrinsic nature of academic life
and UBC's location on the tip of Point Grey.
He thinks that UBC alumni, who were once students
and have now assumed responsibilities in the
community, have a foot in both worlds and are in an
optimum position to foster communication between the
University and the society that supports it.
A concrete example of the association's new role was
the recent visit of a key association committee on
government relations to Victoria.
The committee has made an annual approach to
Victoria on behalf of the University for many years. This
year, true to its objective of fostering communication,
the committee adopted a new approach.
"For the first time we didn't go asking for anything
other than a better understanding of the role of UBC,"
said Mr. Lindsay.
The committee met with Members of the Legislative
Assembly representing all three political parties to
MEMBERS of the Alumni Association's government
relations committee and senior UBC administrative ^
personnel visited Victoria recently to meet with Members >
of the Legislative Assembly of all parties. For details see
story below. Let to right in photo above are: Mr. Evan
Wolfe, Social Credit MLA; Mrs. Frederick Field, association
second vice-president; Mr. William White, UBC's depu
"What are the University's capital requirements?"
"How can tenure be justified?"
"How does the University get rid of a rotten
professor?"
"Why doesn't UBC operate on a year-round
basis?"
These are some of the questions raised by British
Columbia Members of the Legislative Assembly from
all three political parties when the UBC Alumni
Association's government relations committee visited
Victoria recently.
DELEGATION LISTED
Representing the Alumni Association at the
Victoria meeting were Mr. Robert Dundas, chairman
of the government relations committee; Mr. Barrie
Lindsay, president of the Alumni Association; Mr.
Frank Walden, first vice-president; Mrs. Frederick
Field, second vice-president, and Mr. Jack Stathers,
executive director of the Association.
Three active members of the UBC community also
attended the meeting: Dr. Peter Pearse, president of
the UBC Faculty Association; UBC's registrar, Mr.
J.E.A. Parnall, and UBC's deputy president and
bursar, Mr. William White.
The UBC representatives were present to answer
MLAs' questions first-hand and to help attain the
government relations committee's objective of giving
the MLAs "a better understanding of the role of the
University."
The committee met separately with the New
Democrats and the Liberals in caucus and with a
group of Social Credit MLAs. Despite differences in
political ideology and their parties' positions in the
house, the MLAs raised questions that reflected
common themes.
The Alumni Association committee members felt
that the MLAs expressed a genuine interest in
=putv
Victoria Delegation <
University affairs and that their questions reflected
the attitudes of their constituents toward the
University.
What follows are some of the questions raised by
the MLAs (in italics), the responses by members of
the delegation and some of the impressions brought
away by the Alumni Association committee
members.
• What are the future capital requirements of
UBC?
Mr. White outlined the University's $85 million
capital program for the five-year period 1969 to
1974. The plan calls for expenditure of $17 million a
year. He told the MLAs that in the first two years of
the plan the shortfall totalled $22 million.
The MLAs were shocked at the amount of capital
the University claimed it needed for expansion and
replacement of existing facilities. The discussion led
to questions about the proper role of the University
in society.
• // the University expects large-scale capital
support, should it not attune its efforts more closely
to the needs and desires of society?
Questions in this area were answered by Dr.
Pearse, who argued that the most vital role of the
University was the propagation and extension of
knowledge and not job training. Some MLAs found
this viewpoint difficult to understand.
Committee members concluded from this portion
of the discussion that the values of the general public
often conflict with those of the University
community. The committee felt there was a need for
members of the academic community to make their
views on the role of the University more widely
known to the general public. »
• Why doesn't UBC operate on a trimester
system, which it was felt would make more efficient
use of the time of faculty members and physical
plant?
Mr. White and Mr. Parnall replied that evaluations
by the University have shown that UBC's two-term
system is less expensive than the trimester system. -v-
Committee members felt an evaluation of the two »■
systems should be carried out and the results
published.
• How can tenure be justified?
Dr. Pearse said that one of the most important
roles of the University and its academic members was
that of social critic. He argued that in order to fulfill "~
this role effectively, a faculty member required
protection from the possibility of pressure related to
his future employment status.
WELL RECEIVED
The committee felt that Dr. Pearse's arguments
were well received by the MLAs, but that even taking
the validity of the argument into account, the MLAs
still did not feel that tenure could be justified.
Interested MLAs raised a related question: .-
• How do you get rid of a professor who is not
properly performing his job1?
Dr. Pearse explained that the most important
method is non-renewal of his contract. New
professors are normally hired on short-term contracts,
and are not given tenure until they have convinced *"
6/UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971 THROUGH ASSOCIATION
discuss the goals and policies of the University. The
active interest displayed by the MLAs confirmed the
committee's belief in the need for such communication.
Mr. Lindsay believes that the questions asked by the
president and Bursar; Mr. Barrie Lindsay, president of the
\ UBC Alumni Association; the Hon. Donald Brothers,
Minister of Education; Mr. Robert Dundas, chairman of the
Alumni Association's government relations committee; Mr.
Jack Parnall, UBC's registrar, and Mr. Frank Walden,
Alumni Association first vice-president. Photo by Jim
MLAs, as representatives of the people of B.C., reflect
public feeling toward the University.
He and other members of the committee were struck
by the discrepancy between the way the University is
viewed by the MLAs and the way it is viewed by active
members of the University community. He believes that
it is as important for the University to understand the
attitudes of the public as it is for the public to
understand the policies of the University (For details see
story below).
A further conclusion reached by the committee was
that "despite all the publicity that emanates from the
University, it is still not understood."
In an attempt to overcome this problem the Alumni
Association has developed a series of FYI (For Your
Information) bulletins.
The FYls are short, snappy news releases that keep
readers informed about some of the basic needs of the
University and about some of the things it is doing to
serve the community. Recent FYls, for example, dealt
with developments in the Faculty of Forestry, which
celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and the new
Health Sciences Centre at UBC.
"Both forestry and medicine are academic disciplines
where developments affect the entire population of
British Columbia," said Mr. Lindsay, who explained that
the FYls are mailed to "people who are in positions to
mould or effect change in public attitude and opinion."
FYls are received by all members of the legislature,
all school trustees and elected municipal officials
throughout the province, all chambers of commerce and
boards of trade, and all members of the UBC Senate.
So far the association has chosen the relatively easy
route of explaining the value of UBC's professional
faculties to the community. Selling the public on the
value of a liberal education, Mr. Lindsay concedes, is a
much more difficult proposition.
In the past two years the Alumni Association has,
through its branches program, been making efforts to
extend understanding of the University throughout the
province by encouraging top-ranking University people
to travel around the province and make their views
known, and by co-operating with the University's Center
for Continuing Education in its efforts to extend the
University's role out into the wider community.
The UBC Alumni Association has 15 branch
organizations throughout B.C. It also has six branches
located elsewhere in Canada: Calgary, Edmonton,
Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, as well as
branches located in the United States in New York, San
Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.
Last year President Walter Gage toured many of the
B.C. branches and received an exceptionally warm
welcome from UBC alumni on all occasions. This year
both Dean J.F. McCreary of the Faculty of Medicine and
Dean Joseph A.F. Gardner of the Faculty of Forestry
will make similar tours.
In co-operation with the Center for Continuing
Education, the association this year is sponsoring
non-credit courses in such subjects as "Reading and
Study Skills," "New Directions for Women," and
"Pollution in the Environment" at five provincial
locations: Kamloops, Chilliwack, Prince George, Trail
and Vernon.
Concurrently, the association is attempting to
strengthen graduates' interest in the University through
the organization of strong divisions programs, which
permit graduates to relate to the University via their own
specialty.
FOUR DIVISIONS
The association now has four divisions programs in
Commerce, Law, Home Economics and Nursing and the
success of these programs indicates that graduates are
much better able to identify with specific segments of
the University community with which they have had
closer ties than with the University as a whole.
As well as devising new methods of communication,
the association has enhanced its tried and true methods.
The UBC Chronicle, the association's longest-lived
communications organ, has drastically altered its content
within the past few years from nostalgic memoirs to
critical analysis of various social issues in which the
active University community is involved.
The Chronicle, edited by Mr. Clive Cocking, assisted
by Miss Susan Jamieson, has achieved a high standard of
excellence and last year was given an award for editorial
content by the American Alumni Council.
The association has also been instrumental in assisting
the University in the development of public service
television broadcasting in the lower mainland area of
B.C. Aided by a grant from the association, UBC's
Please turn to Page Twelve
See NEW IDEAS
Ryajj^-
Questioned by MLAs
their colleagues of their competence. Non-renewals
are common.
Tenure is not meant to protect poor professors,
and it probably doesn't any more than employment
practices in government and industry. We have
explicit procedures for dismissal for incompetence.
And, of course, there are more subtle methods such
as withholding salary increases and promotions, as in
otfier occupations.
•■ The committee concluded that the whole question
of tenure should be debated by the University
community and by the community-at-large to provide
better understanding of the issues involved.
• How many foreign, particularly American,
faculty members does UBC employ and is sufficient
Canadian content being provided in courses?
■ Dr. Pearse pointed out that citizenship is not the
important factor. Familiarity with Canadian
institutions and problems is, however, especially in
areas such as the social sciences where it is important
to have Canadian content. In general, he subscribed
to the doctrine that Canadian talent should be used
where it was available, but not at the expense of
academic quality.
Dr. Pearse pointed out that 80 per cent of UBC's
tenured faculty are Canadian. He said that there is
considerable turnover at lower ranks and that at these
levels there are now more Canadians available than
has been the case in the past. Consequently, more
Canadians are being hired.
The committee members felt that MLAs were
convinced that the University was conducting its
""affairs properly in this area.
The committee also noted that much of the
discussion centred on the more general problem of
overall planning for higher education in British
Columbia.
MLAs of all parties were critical of the government
for its failure to assume sufficient initiative for overall
planning and of UBC for failing to enunciate its goals
and policies clearly. They expressed a strong desire to
see such a statement by the University as a guide to
government policy.
The roles of the present Advisory Board and
Academic Board were discussed and criticized.
The Advisory Board is responsible for making
recommendations to the Minister of Education for
division of provincial government grants among the
universities.
MAJOR COMPLAINT
The major complaint regarding the Advisory Board
was that it meets seldom and does not employ
research staff to analyse critically the submissions
made to it by the universities.
The chief responsibilities of the Academic Board,
as outlined in The Universities Act, are: "to collect,
examine, and provide information relating to
academic standards, and to advise the appropriate
authorities on orderly academic development of
Universities established under this Act and of colleges
established under the Public Schools Act by keeping
in review the academic standards of each."
The Academic Board is also empowered to "report
on any matters respecting academic standards and
development in higher education as may be from time
to time required by the Minister of Education."
MLAs, on the basis of the discussion, concluded
that the Academic Board does not take advantage of
the wide powers of investigation and analysis granted
to it, nor does it appear to be doing what it is
empowered to do under The Universities Act.
ROLES INADEQUATE
There was agreement among all MLAs that the
roles being played by these boards at present are
inadequate. There was disagreement on the question
of whether the solution lay in increasing the powers
of the existing boards or providing a new framework
for the development of higher education.
Even those MLAs who agreed that a new
framework was necessary disagreed on whether it
should be modelled on the centralized Board of
Regents system used in California or whether a less
centralized co-ordinating agency would be sufficient.
Under the California system a single governing
board co-ordinates and governs all public institutions
of higher learning within the state.
Under the co-ordinating agency approach, a board
would be empowered to co-ordinate and control
certain selected activities of public institutions of
higher education, but restrained from exercising
general governing or administrative powers. Under
this pattern, the existing Board of Governors of each
institution would continue to exercise traditional
control over all matters except those expressly
delegated to the co-ordinating agency.
The Alumni Association, in its submission to the
Advisory Committee on Inter-University Relations,
chaired by Dr. G. Neil Perry, former deputy minister
of education, concluded that the co-ordinating
agency was the most suitable.
UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971/7 BY MARK WALDMAN
THIS UNIVERSITY OFFERS A
A new kind of educational institution — one which
may be the forerunner of the universities of the
future — began operations in England in January.
The Open University or, as it is more popularly
known, "The University of the Air," is designed to
fill an enormous gap in the existing educational
system by providing an opportunity for mature
students to obtain a university degree.
The present educational system is very much a
"one-ladder affair" and although the system has been
tremendously expanded during the last ten years it
remains quite inflexible. For those who wish to
obtain a university degree, there is a well-defined
program of secondary education leading to university
entrance and an equally well-defined system of
specialized courses within universities which a student
must first take before receiving his baccalaureate
degree.
Thousands step off the ladder before reaching the
top and although many school-leavers later discover
that they need a higher education, either for job
promotion or simply for personal satisfaction, the
possibilities for returning to school are bleak. It
usually means giving up a job and placing a severe
financial burden on one's family. It is for this reason,
particularly, that few school-leavers return to finish
their education.
In recent years educators have recognized that the
present educational system largely ignores this huge
reservoir of human talent and potential. Some
correspondence courses have been set up but the
offerings have been meagre — until now. In January, a
new University designed especially for the
school-leaver began operating in England. It is called
the Open University.
9
Basically, the Open University is a correspondence
school. In fact, it represents a radical departure from
the old concept of a correspondence school. The
name Open University is a particularly apt one. It is
open to students, to places and methods.
In setting up the Open University, the planners
took, as basic, the axiom that "no formal academic
qualifications would be required for registration as a
student. Anyone could try his or her hand and only
failure to progress would be a bar to continuation of
studies."
The basic criteria for admission are: (a) Is the
student sufficiently prepared to benefit from and
succeed in the proposed studies at degree level?; (b) Is
there a particular need for improved educational
standards for the student's present or intended
occupational group?; (c) Is the course the student
wishes to follow one in which the Open University
can provide adequate tuitional help in his region?; (d)
Did the student apply early or late in the list of
applicants?
When the University has considered all applicants
in the light of answers to the first three questions —
and these are used only to a limited extent —
applicants are accepted on the basis of "first come,
first served."
The prospectus of the Open University states quite
explicitly that only in exceptional cases will it accept
students under 21 years of age (e.g., a handicapped
student who cannot attend a regular university). The
aim of the Open University is to cater to those who
Dr. Mark Waldman received
his Ph.D. from UBC in
1970. While at UBC, he was
a member of Senate
representing graduate
students. He wrote the
article on Britain's Open
University while a
post-doctoral student at
Oxford. He is currently
continuing research at the
Hebrew University of
Jerusalem.
have left school and who now want to return and to
the more mature student who knows what he wants
in the way of an education and is sufficiently
motivated to work hard to get it.
The heart of the Open University is a small campus
near the new town of Milton Keynes, a village in
Buckinghamshire to the northwest of London. On
this campus are housed the main administration
buildings, some laboratories for post-graduate
research and offices for the designers of the courses.
This campus represents only the administrative
centre. The real campus is spread, in fact, over the
whole of the United Kingdom.
It was decided in the beginning that for the
University to be really effective in teaching it must
establish more than just "paper contact" with
students. To this end the United Kingdom was
divided into twelve regions, each with a regional
office. The regional centres administer a pool of
counsellors and study spaces in about 200 towns.
These are gathering places where students and
counsellors can meet and thus avoid "academic
isolation."
The courses offered by the Open University have
been especially designed for the part-time student
who will be studying at home. They consist of three
basic elements — correspondence study, a series of
broadcasts on radio and TV and a one-week,
obligatory summer school.
In addition to supplying written correspondence
packages, the University will also give out tapes,
slides, and records. The real innovation, however, lies
in the wide use the University plans to make of the
British Broadcasting Corporation's TV and radio
stations. Each correspondence package is scheduled
to coincide with an appropriate lecture or lectures on
radio and/or TV. The correspondence, broadcast, and
other components of the teaching system will be as
AN OPEN UNIVE
Another University of B.C. graduate who has
visited and taken an interest in Britain's Open
University is Mr. A.E. "Andy" Soles, the former
principal of Selkirk College in Castlegar, B.C., who
was recently appointed assistant superintendent
(post-secondary services) in the Department of
Education in Victoria. The following article is based
on a faculty seminar which Mr. Soles gave at Selkirk
College before taking up his new post with the
provincial government. The opinions expressed by
Mr. Soles are personal and should not be construed as
government policy.
By ANDY SOLES
Whether or not a fourth public university will be
required for British Columbia will depend upon a
continuing demand for higher education which will
be determined, in the final analysis, by social and
economic conditions. Today and for the next decade,
the need for space and facilities would appear to be in
the post-secondary field, but precisely what kinds of
facilities will be required is not at this time entirely
clear. It would seem that the real demands might be
in the technical areas. Perhaps we need another
Institute of Technology, more vocational training
schools, more comprehensive colleges.
Perhaps we need only wait for educational
demands to subside. Recent surveys undertaken by
the Department of Education show quite
convincingly that elementary school enrolments are
dropping in most districts of the province. Obviously
some very careful studies need to be made to
determine our real requirements.
MANY QUESTIONS
If these studies should reveal that we do in fact
need a fourth public university, we should, in my
opinion, examine very carefully Britain's Open
University. We would want to know how successfully
the Open University was maintaining good academic
standards. We would want precise information on per
student costs. (Certainly we cannot afford higher
costs in post-secondary education). We would want
information on the student attrition rate. There are
many questions we would want answered. But if they
could be answered to our satisfaction we should, as
one alternative, consider a modification of the Open
University of Britain for British Columbia.
How would such an institution be organized and
operate in our province? The first requirement would
be a basic campus located in a central part of the
province. In my opinion a basic campus would
include the following:
1. A building to provide faculty offices and
conference rooms but not, at least in the initial phase,
sitv in
d even
classrooms.
2. Basic teaching or course development (but
research) laboratories for the physical and life
sciences. As needs were determined it might be
necessary to add technical laboratories.
3. A library, carefully selected to include the
major basic works in the various disciplines.
4. A completely equipped audio-visual centre.
The tasks of the full-time faculty based on the
central campus would be: (1) to develop learning
packages; (2) to set and grade examinations; (3) to
maintain a continuous liaison with course tutors; (4)
to monitor academic standards; and, (5) as
opportunity presented itself, to do major face-to-face
lecturing in a number of regional centres. They would
be faculty members as well qualified academically as
any one would find in a reputable university
Canada. They would also have the opportune
bring to their campus scholars of national and
international reputation to lead their course
development teams.
The nine existing community colleges in B.C. are
potential regional centres where the real work of the
Open University could go on. Selkirk College, for
example, which serves the West Kootenay area, could
be designated a regional centre for the Open
University. Associated with it would be a number of
study centres where students would have access to
books, course tutors and audio-visual equipment.
Study centres associated with Selkirk College might
be located in Nelson, Trail, Grand Forks, Nakusp,
Salmo, Rossland, New Denver, Slocan and Fruitvale.
I would like to make clear that I am not
advocating that two-year colleges be turned into
degree-granting institutions. The degrees would be
awarded by the Open University.
The exact location of study centres would, of
course, depend upon student demand. Undoubtedly,
some of these should be located in secondary schools,
where high school students could also make good use
of whatever books or audio-visual equipment were
available.
A regional director, who would look after such
matters as the registration of students and the
appointment and supervision of part-time tutors and
counsellors, would be based in each of the colleges.
He would probably draw his part-time course tutors
and counsellors from among the faculty of the
colleges or from qualified personnel within the
community.
Arrangements would have to be made with the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and with local
radio and television stations to broadcast lectures or
demonstrations which would be closely integrated
with the learning packages sent out to the students.
Facilities would be provided in the learning centres to
8/UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971 SECOND CHANCE
fully integrated as possible. Radio and TV have been
used in the past as educational tools. However, the
task undertaken by the Open University represents
the most ambitious to date.
9
The Open University will not only be open in
terms of people, places and ways of teaching, it will
also be open in terms of the flexibility of the courses
that it gives. One of the main harangues of students
these days is the increasing speciali2:ation and
decreasing personalization of a university education,
i.e., courses do not seem to relate to each other, to
students, or to society. At the Open University, in
contrast to the more conventional universities, an
interdisciplinary approach and maximum flexibility
seem to be the overriding considerations in course
planning.
The first-year science course, for instance, takes as
its aim to present and explain some of the concepts
and principles of importance in modern science and
to show how science, technology, and society are
interrelated. Among other things, the course will
discuss the growth and meaning of science, the
emergence of science related to the social framework,
instruments as extsnsions of man's senses, the
periodic table, cells and organisms, the genetic code,
evolution, population explosion, diversity in
morphology, and what is life? This covers the
philosophy of science, chemistry, physics, biology,
genetics, anthropology and sociology. At an ordinary
university, a student would have to take separate
courses in each of these subjects. At the Open
RSITY FOR B.C.?
play back broadcasts which students want to hear
agj|^or which they may have missed. Arrangements
v w^Pi have to be made to receive and distribute
correspondence assignments and learning packages
through a central agency.
Courses and programs developed at the third- and
fourth-year levels of work should be closely
"articulated with those provided in first- and
•. second-year in the regional colleges, since I would
anticipate that most studnets would still attend
regional colleges for their first and second years.
However, the Open University would have to develop
fjrst- and second-year study programs for students
"who are remote from a regional college or who must
work full-time and cannot afford to attend a college.
Other regional centres may have to be developed, for
example, in the Peace River block, the east
Kootenays and so on.
^■^mportant part of the Open University concept
•ts^PjWpulsory attendance at summer school. Most of
" our regional colleges could very easily provide such
service.
of instructing at more senior levels of work.
(6) It will bring higher education closer to people,
not only physically but by reducing the
"psychological" distance between them and
universities. In so doing it will cut through some of
the mystique of university education and perhaps
lead to greater public support for it.
(7) It ought to lead to further experiments into
the important matter of giving instruction or
communicating knowledge to people living in a
complex age in which they have to know more and
learn more quickly than at any other time in history.
(8) It ought to add a degree of flexibility to our
educational system, making it possible to keep more
HOLDS PROMISE
♦ I have outlined only in the barest detail a way in
which the Open University concept might be
introduced to B.C. But such a scheme promises some
definite advantages. Let me conclude by suggesting
some of them.
(1) It would extend additional post-secondary
educational opportunities up to the degree level to
students in most parts of our province. This would be
an important advantage for the large numbers of
people who have completed two years; of
post-secondary education in regional colleges but
cannot go further.
(2) It should result in some reduction in per
student costs. If this is so, it is an important
advantage. I need not remind you of the
recently-published report of the Economic Council of
Canada which has some interesting things to say
about the escalating costs of higher education in
Canada.
_ (3) It places the responsibility for education on
»the student himself. He will have to want education
badly enough to work independently. All kinds of
help will be available to him, but he will have to make
the effort.
(4) By co-ordinating the efforts of noted scholars
in the development of learning packages, students will
*>e exposed — albeit indirectly — to the best minds of
our nation.
(5) From the point of view of the regional colleges
the scheme will afford their faculties the opportunity
MR. ANDY SOLES
of our people abreast of current thought and practice
and allowing them greater opportunities for
retraining.
(9) It ought to contribute substantially to a
realization of our dream of life-long education.
(10) Finally, it ought to make it possible for those
who, for a variety of reasons, had no hope of
continuing their education to do so.
These are some of the promises the Open
University may hold for British Columbia.
University he takes but one course and, most
important of all, the material is taught as an
interdisciplinary subject and not as unrelated facts.
The advantages are obvious.
In 1971 four faculties will be operative — Arts,
Science, Mathematics and Social Sciences. In 1972
the Faculties of Technology and Educational Studies
will be added. At a conventional university a student
is normally expected to specialize in one subject. At
the Open University it is still true that a student can
specialize — if he wants to.
The intense specialization of the conventional
university program has been highly criticized in the
past as producing "isolated specialists," i.e., people
who, although they may be expert in their own field,
cannot relate, much less interact and co-operate, with
experts in other fields. Some readers may think that
the Open University, by the scope of its courses, will
fail to properly educate in depth. The Open
University hopes to teach its students how to absorb
large amounts of data and how to fit this data into an
overall general context rather than into specialized,
confined areas. Graduates from the Open University
will be generalists and may well be the vanguard of a
new breed.
To obtain a BA degree at the Open University.a
student must take two foundation courses and four
more courses at second or subsequent levels. A BA
(honors) degree is awarded to a student who
completes two foundation courses (i.e., two first-year
courses) and six more courses at second or
subsequent levels provided that two of these six are at
third or fourth level. A student can take one but not
more than two courses a year. Thus, he or she can
complete a BA degree in three years, or a BA
(honors) degree in four years or the degree can be
spread over many years. (Under the British university
system a BA degree is usually taken in three years and
a BA (honors) degree in four years. To let prospective
employers know what a student has taken, the degree
certificate will list the courses in which credits have
been gained).
Money must figure in any discussion of higher
education. The facts are clear. An Arts student at
UBC pays just over $1,800 in tuition fees alone in
four years. A student at the Open University,
provided he has ready access to a radio and TV
beforehand, will pay only $360.
9
Besides the cost to the individual student, the cost
to the taxpayer must also be reckoned with. The
Open University has no large blocks of classrooms
like the Buchanan Building and no multi-million
dollar Student Union Building. Moreover, there are
no operating costs in the Open University budget for
maintaining such large buildings. Classes are held in
the home with the exception of one-week summer
schools, when classrooms are rented, and the
community "study centers" are not elaborate affairs.
In an optimistic mood. Dr. Walter Perry, the
vice-chancellor or president of the Open University,
calculates that after initial capitalization and
running-in the University may, in about ten years'
time, be able to a significant extent, to support itself
on student fees and sales of material both in the
United Kingdom and overseas.
The Open University is a huge undertaking. The
planners hope to enrol 25,000 students for the 1971
session (the term runs from January to December).
This will raise by more than half again the number of
first-year students studying for first degrees in the
United Kingdom.
Should the Open University prove successful, not
only will it fill an enormous gap in the present
educational system, it will be a forerunner of the
universities of the future.
||H Jfc Volume 17, No. 5 - Feb. 25,
IIMI 1971- Published by the
P^I^JP^I University of British Columbia
~ - _ ^ n -r #» and distributed free. UBC
REPORTS^
Reports appears on Thursdays
during the University's winter session. J.A.
Banham, Editor. Linda Adams, Production
Supervisor. Letters to the Editor should be sent
to Information Services, Main Mall North
Administration Building, UBC, Vancouver 8,
B.C.
UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971/9 MAKING GOOD THINGS OUT OF GARBAGE
A new project that makes good things out of
garbage has been started on the UBC campus.
It is called the University Endowment Lands
Recycling Project and the two moving spirits behind
it are Mrs. Janey Southey, the wife of a UBC junior
faculty member and Mrs. Lynne Vickson, the wife of
a UBC post-doctoral fellow.
Recycling — the conversion of waste products into
re-usable materials — is not a new idea, but with
increasing concern for the environment, recycling has
become relevant again, Mrs. Southey explained.
"During the second World War Canadians practised
conservation of natural resources through recycling
by choice and by legislation," she said and she
believes that they can be encouraged to do so again.
So far the UEL group have confined themselves to
recycling old newspapers, but other solid waste
products such as glass and metal containers can also
be recycled. The newspapers are converted locally
into cardboard, wallboard and many other items
requiring heavier grades of paper.
SAVES TREES
As explained by Mrs. Southey, recycling is
advantageous in three ways: every ton of old papers
recycled to make fresh newsprint saves approximately
17 trees and thereby helps preserve valuable natural
resources; pollution is decreased because recycling
plants cause less pollution than pulp and paper mills;
VANCOUVER'S winter rains fail to dampen the
enthusiasm of these University Endowment Land
residents, who are collecting papers for recycling. At
left are Sean and Tabatha Southey, aged seven and
five respectively, children of Mrs. Janey Southey,
third from left, one of the organizers of the project.
Another of the project's organizers, Mrs. Lynne
Vickson, is at right with her three-year-old son
Benjamin on her shoulders. Tommy Chambers, aged
eight, is pulling a wagon loaded with papers and
Michael Williams, aged six. Picture by David
Margerison, UBC Photo Department.
it saves valuable land space now being used as garbage
fill areas.
The UBC project got under way last Thanksgiving
weekend when a brigade of about a dozen children,
aged 5-10 years old, went door to door through the
Acadia Park and Acadia Camp residential areas.
They collected over a ton of newspapers from
enthusiastic residents. A similar amount of paper has
been collected from among the some 600 residents —
mostly married students or junior faculty members of
UBC — on a bi-weekly basis ever since.
The project is now organized on a much more
sophisticated basis. The community has been divided
into 15 areas, each with a representative who collects
and deposits newspapers into about 10 specially
designated deposit bins.
Even the highrise residents have worked out a
method of collection: newspapers are deposited in a
storage locker, the number of which is posted in the
elevator. Residents either deposit papers in the locker
or leave them beside the elevator stop on their floor
to be collected by the area representative.
Children have continued their involvement in the
project through the local University Hill Elementary
School. The children bring newspapers to school to
be recycled and a special room has been set aside
where Grade Six children collect and bundle the
papers.
Mrs. Vickson recalls one occasion in the early days
of the project when she personally lifted a ton and a
half of papers five different times in 24 hours.
SOCIETY COLLECTS
Collection of the papers from the deposit areas is
now done by members of the Joshua Society, a
co-operative group that is becoming self-supporting
by collecting and selling recycleable materials.
Any profits that accrue from the UBC project will
be used to provide playground equipment for local
children.
Mrs. Southey and Mrs. Vickson would like to see
recycling organized on a city-wide basis. They point
out that Pacific Press alone uses 700 tons of
newsprint each day. The idea has been spreading and
about 20 deposit areas have been set up in
Vancouver.
At UBC the Joshua Society has extended
collection beyond the UEL project and now also call
on the UBC Computing Centre — a major campus"
paper user. Other UBC departments or others
interested in participating in recycling are urged to
contact Mrs. Janey Southey at 224—5767 or Mrs.
Lynne Vickson at 224-7109.
NINE STUDY PROGRAMS OFFERED
Greece, Mexico, Japan, England, Tunisia, Italy
and, if permission is granted to travel there, China
are the destinations of nine educational-travel
programs being offered during 1971 by the UBC
Center for Continuing Education.
Since the Center (formerly the extension
department) entered the educational-travel field in
1965, more than 300 persons have taken part in
14 international tours offered as part of the
University's continuing education program.
Two kinds of programs are offered: (1) courses
of directed study abroad, which may or may not
be taken for credit and, (2) general educational
travel programs.
DIRECTED STUDY
This spring and summer, four courses of
directed study abroad will be offered. The
Department of Fine Arts is sponsoring a summer
school in Florence, Italy, May 21-June 30 on the
art of the Renaissance.
Archaeology of the Ancient Near East will be
offered in Tunisia July 3 to 31 with Dr. Hanna
Kassis, archaeologist and Islamicist from UBC, as
accompanying instructor. The course will
concentrate on Tunisia with emphasis on the
Phoenicians and their empire centred in Carthage.
Two courses are being offered in England. A
Shakespeare course July 5 to Aug. 7 consists of
two weeks at Reading University near London and
three weeks at Stratford-upon-Avon. A field study
course for social studies teachers July 1-31 will be
conducted by Dean Neville V. Scarfe of UBC's
Faculty of Education.*
Five general educational-travel programs are
planned by the Center for 1971. The educational
components of these programs, which differentiate
them from commercial tours, include orientation
lectures on the history, culture and present-day
life of the countries to be visited, visits to places
not on ordinary tours, seminars and other
educational events in the countries being visited
involving local experts drawn from academic,
governmental, business, professional and artistic
circles and, in some cases, inclusion of UBC
faculty members on the tour as resource persons.
This year's programs include:
• Classical Greece, a four-week tour in June
emphasizing the antiquities of Greece, particularly
* Center for Continuing Education flight to London,
England, will depart Vancouver June 26, returning Aug.
13. Flight is available to UBC educational-travel course
participants ($306). Flight is also available to other UBC
students and faculty members and immediate family
($316).
of the Peloponnese and Crete, headed by Dr.
C.W.J. Eliot, of the Department of Classics.
• A three-week tour of Peking, Shanghai,
Nanking, Canton, rural communes and other
places in China in August if permission is granted
by the authorities of the People's Republic.
• A three-week tour of major cities, cultural
centres and rural areas of Japan beginning May 9.
• A three-week program of summer seminars at
Ivan lllich's controversial institute of learning,
Centro Intercultural de Documentacion in
Cuernavaca, Mexico, during July and August.
• The Mayan Trail II, a three-week
archaeological travel tour of Mexico beginning
Dec. 17 and based on a similar program in 1969.
BROCHURE AVAILABLE
Brochures and detailed information on each of
these programs are available by writing to the
Center for Continuing Education, University of
B.C., Vancouver 8, or telephoning 228-2181.
Previous educational-travel programs conducted
by the Center have included: Mexico (1966),
Japan (1968, 1969, 1970), South America (1969),
The Moorish World (Southern Spain and North
Africa, 1969), Peru (1969), Mexico and Central
America (1970) and Europe (1970).
10/UBC Reports/Feb. 25. 1971 UBC NEWS
BRIEF
A COLUMN FOR UBC GRADUATES
ROUNDING UP THE TOP NEWS ITEMS OF
RECENT WEEKS. THE MATERIAL BELOW
APPEARED IN MORE EXTENDED FORM IN
CAMPUS EDITIONS OF 'UBC REPORTS.'
READERS WHO WISH COPIES OF CAMPUS
EDITIONS CAN OBTAIN THEM BY WRITING TO
THE INFORMATION OFFICE, UBC, VANCOUVER
8, B.C.
BRIEF APPROVED
The University of B.C.'s Board of Governors has
approved as official University policy a brief calling
for an amendment to the British North America Act,
the major document of the Canadian constitution.
The brief was presented to the Special Joint
Committee of the Senate and House of Commons on
the Constitution of Canada by Prof. Robert M. Clark,
UBC's academic planner, when the committee visited
Vancouver early in January.
The proposed amendment would make it clear
that the federal government has the authority to
allocate funds for higher education to provincial
governments for current and capital grants tc public
and private universities, make direct grants for
research, and provide scholarships, bursaries and loans
to all students at post-secondary institutions.
fIThe brief was prepared by a committee selected by
e presidents or the Boards of Governors of UBC,
Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria
and Notre Dame University in Nelson. UBC's Board
approved the brief as official University policy on
Feb. 2. (Edition of Feb. 11, 1971).
TUITION INCREASED
UBC's Board of Governors has approved increases
in tuition fees for graduate students and in rates for
students living in campus residences.
The basic tuition fee for students registered in the
Faculty of Graduate Studies will be increased from
$300 to $400 in the 1971-72 session.
Board-and-residence rates for students living in
^JBC's permanent residences will be increased by a
I^^Bl of $10 a month over the next two years. The
increase will be split into two equal parts — $5 a
month in 1971-72 and $5 a month in 1972-73.
Also approved were increases in rates for students
living in campus residences during the Summer
Session. The increases are necessary to meet increased
labor and operating costs in campus residences, which
. operate on a non-profit, self-sustaining basis.
The repayment of loans to build residences and
the costs of operating them are met from the rents
and other services charged to students living in the
complexes.
The residence rate increases were discussed with
the students' councils in each of the residences. The
suggestion that the rate increase be spread equally
over a two-year period was made by the councils and
SONGFEST SET
Fourteen UBC fraternities and sororities will
take part in the annual songfest sponsored by
the campus Greek letter societies in the Queen
Elizabeth Theatre Friday, Feb. 26, at 8 p.m.
Proceeds from the event will go to the UBC
Library Fund.
Tickets, at $1.25 for students and $2 for the
general public, are available at two locations in
the Student Union Building — a booth on the
main floor open at noon hour and in room 230.
Tickets are also available at the Vancouver
Ticket Centre and at the door.
The annual songfest involves competition
between fraternities and sororities for the
Songfest Trophy. Phrateres, a campus social
service organization for women, will also,
compete. A dance routine by UBC students will
open the program.
the increase as a whole was endorsed by each of
them.
The recommendation to increase fees for graduate
students was made by a temporary committee
established by President Walter H. Gage.
The effect of the new regulations is to change the
existing fee structure fo' graduate students from one
based on a flat charge for a specific degree to one
based on payment of an annual fee as long as the
student uses University facilities.
The $100 increase for students working towards
master's and doctor's degrees will apply to those
students who are on campus. Those who are on
extended leave for medical reasons or those not using
the University facilities will pay only $50 a year.
UBC now charges graduate students a basic $900
for the master's and doctor's degrees. Students who
are in the advanced years of their doctoral programs
pay an additional fee of only $50 a year. Under the
new fee schedule all students will pay a flat fee of
$400 a year.
There was substantial disagreement among the 11
members of the committee set up to investigate
graduate student fees.
Three graduate students who were members of the
committee submitted a minority report dissenting
from the recommendation to increase fees. The
students were supported by Prof. B.N. Moyls,
associate dean of Graduate Studies and chairman of
the temporary committee.
The committee, in its majority report, said there
was no valid rationale for establishing tuition fees for
graduate students because of a lack of reliable data on
the costs of various academic programs.
In addition to calling for a cost study of graduate
programs, the majority report recommends that the
minimum level of full-time teaching assistantships be
increased and that consideration be given to
establishment of a scheme of $4,000 Dissertation
Fellowships for students in the final year of doctoral
programs, and calls on the Board to request an
additional subsidy from the federal government for
each foreign student enrolled at Canadian universities
and colleges.
Prof. Moyls, in supporting the students who
submitted the minority report, said increases in the
cost of living, the lack of increases in financial
assistance for graduate students and the impending
threat of taxation of graduate awards by the federal
government all tend to undermine the financial
position of graduate students.
"If financial support for graduate students is not
increased before student fees are increased, I am
convinced that graduate students will lose out," he
said. (Edition of Feb. 4, 1971).
FOUR APPOINTED
UBC's Board of Governors approved four senior
appointments early in February, including a director
for the newly-created Water Resources Research
Centre and a head for the new Department of
Radiology in the Faculty of Medicine.
The new appointments are as follows:
• Prof. Irving K. Fox, 54, a leading water
resources expert at the University of Wisconsin, who
will become director of UBC's Water Resources
Research Centre July 1;
• Prof. J. Scott Dunbar, 51, of McGill University,
who will become head of the new Department of
Radiology at UBC July 1;
• Prof. Noel Hall, 41, a long-time member of the
Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration,
who will become director of the Institute of
Industrial Relations April 1 and,
• Prof. Karl Ruppenthal, 54, who joined the UBC
faculty on July 1 from Stanford University and has
been named director of the Centre for Transportation
Studies.
In addition, the Board has approved the
appointment of Canadian-born Prof. J. Reginald
Richardson, 59, professor of physics at the University
of California at Los Angeles, as director of the
TRIUMF Project, effective Sept. 1.
The TRIUMF accelerator now being built in UBC's
south campus research area is a joint venture of the
Universities of Alberta ancl Victoria, UBC and Simon
Fraser University. It is scheduled for completion in
1973.
The new Water Resources Research Centre which
Prof. Fox will head will do mission-oriented research
in the field of water resources to further regional and
ISAIAH BERLIN
TO LECTURE
TWICE AT UBC
Sir Isaiah Berlin, one of the world's leading
political and historical philosophers, will give
two Dal Grauer Memorial Lectures at the
University of B.C. March 1 and 2.
Described as having "one of the liveliest and
most stimulating minds among contemporary
philosophers," Sir Isaiah is president of Wolfson
College at Oxford University in England and
formerly held one of the academic world's most
prestigious posts — Chichele Professor of Social
and Political Theory at Oxford.
Sir Isaiah is particularly well-known for his
studies of Russian political and intellectual
history and both his lectures at UBC will deal
with topics in this field.
On March 1 he will speak in the Frederic
Wood Theatre at 12:30 p.m. on "The Russian
Conception of the Writer's Calling." His March
2 lecture at the Totem Park Residences at 8:15
p.m. is entitled "Russian Obsession with
History and Historicism."
Born in 1909 in Riga, Latvia, then a part of
the Russian Empire, Sir Isaiah emigrated with
his parents to England in 1920. In 1932, the
year after he graduated from Oxford with a
brilliant degree, he began lecturing at Oxford
and has been associated with that institution
ever since, except for service during the Second
World War in New York and Washington, D.C.
Sir Isaiah is perhaps best known to the
public for a number of outstanding books,
including Karl Marx: His Life and Environment;
The Hedgehog and the Fox, which examined
the character of Leo Tolstoy, the famed
Russian writer and philosopher; Historical
Inevitability, a major contribution to the
philosophy of history; and Two Concepts of
Liberty, a plea for independence and human
variety which has been compared to John
Stuart Mill's famed essay On Liberty.
He has lectured widely in North America
and made several appearances on American
television. His radio talks in England have been
described as "rapid, vivid, torrential cascades of
rich, spontaneous, tumbling ideas and images."
national social objectives and train water resources
specialists.
The work of the centre will be supported with a
continuing grant of $350,000 a year from the federal
government.
The main function of the new Centre for
Transportation Studies headed by Dr. Ruppenthal is
to encourage and organize inter-disciplinary studies in
transportation. The Centre has received a four-year,
$360,000 grant from the Canadian Transport
Commission to support research. (Edition of Feb. 4,
1971).
FUND ESTABLISHED
A memorial scholarship fund has been established
to honor Mrs. Alice V. Borden, assistant professor in
the Faculty of Education, who died Feb. 2 after a
lengthy illness.
Mrs. Borden, who was 62 at the time of her death,
was the first director of UBC's Child Study Centre
from 1961 to 1963, and continued to teach at the
Centre up to Christmas, 1970.
The scholarship honoring Mrs. Borden will be
awarded annually to a student teacher in the field of
early childhood education. Contributions to the
memorial fund should be sent to the Bursar's office at
UBC. Cheques should be made payable to the
"University of B.C. (Alice V. Borden Scholarship
Fund)."
Mrs. Borden came to Canada in 1939 with her
husband, Prof. Charles Borden, the noted
archaeologist who has excavated numerous
prehistoric Indian sites in B.C.
She was a graduate of the University of California
at Los Angeles, where she received her bachelor of
arts degree, and Tufts University, where she was
awarded the degree of master of education.
Before her appointment to the UBC faculty in
1960, Mrs. Borden was closely associated with the
former extension department in the development of
pre-school education courses.
UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971/11 ^m^ UBC ALUMNI ■ ■
Contact
MR. RALPH NADER
AN EVENING WITH
RALPH
NADER
Ralph Nader, noted American
consumer affairs crusader, will be guest
speaker at the May 19 annual dinner of
the UBC Alumni Association.
Nader will speak on "Environmental
Hazards: Man-Made and
Man-Remedied."
The author of Unsafe At Any Speed,
Mr. Nader is best known for his
campaign to have cars made safer. He
and his colleagues (known as "Nader's
Raiders") have also compaigned on a
variety of other consumer issues, from
the need for improved rest homes to
safer toys.
It is anticipated that about 800 UBC
alumni will attend the annual meeting
which will be held at 6 p.m., Wednesday,
May 19, in the Hotel Vancouver. Mr.
Nader will speak following the
completion of annual business, including
the election of the 1971-72 alumni
board of management.
TICKETS, PLEASE
Please send me tickets at $6.00
Enclosed is a cheque for $
Name
Address
Phone Number
Mail to: Alumni Association, 6251 N.W.
Marine Drive, Vancouver 8, B.C.
Co-operation Leads
To Series of Courses
During this past year 30,000 adults took
continuing education courses at UBC — more than
the number of students enrolled in UBC's regular
winter session.
Many of these adults came to UBC from
communities around the province. And for many
others, UBC took the courses to them in the
communities where they live. It is an indication of
UBC's continuing concern to reach out and serve the
entire province of B.C.
Why do people take continuing education courses?
"Well, 50 per cent of our students already have
university degrees," says Dr. John Blaney, acting
director of the Center for Continuing Education.
"Wanting to learn is an appetite people never seem to
satisfy."
At least 30 per cent of the continuing education
students are professional people eager to keep
up-to-date with new developments in their fields. And
the Center for Continuing Education at UBC offers
them more than 500 courses — everything from
engineering, education and law to social work,
forestry and community planning.
UBC's efforts in the field of continuing education
began in 1936 when 512 people enrolled in courses
offered by an extension department. As the
developing technology of the province requried that
professional people learn new techniques and
processes, UBC initiated more and more programs to
meet these demands. The department was reorganized
as the Center for Continuing Education in July, 1970,
in recognition of its enlarged role.
The Center offers professional credit and
non-credit courses and also undergraduate University
degree courses, which are given in the evenings. By
attending only night courses it is now possible to
complete a bachelor of arts degree in English,
Psychology, Anthropology and Sociology. The Center
also offers 40 day-time, non-credit general interest
courses.
TREND NOTED
"As we expand, there's a trend toward less
conventional formats for our courses," says Dr.
Blaney. "Industry has asked us to give on-the-job
employee instruction; we design courses for
individual companies; we produce a local TV show
and we even offer an educational travel program."
There's even a course for new aldermen,
co-sponsored by the Center and the Union of B.C.
Municipalities. It lasts three days and last year
attracted 110 aldermen-elect. This year's course will
be held at Harrison Hot Springs Feb. 26-28 and
March 19-21 and will introduce new aldermen to the
organization and administration of municipal
government.
Approximately half the lawyers in B.C.
participated in continuing legal education programs
last year. This spring, 17 law programs will be offered
in Prince George, Nanaimo, Victoria, Vancouver,
Kamloops, Vernon and the Kootenay district.
Refresher courses for engineers are expected to get
underway at the same time in central B.C., Vancouver
Island and Prince George.
And this spring, the Center and the UBC Alumni
Association have combined to offer a series of
programs at various communities around the
province.
The series begins with an evening general interest
program on Feb. 24 in Kamloops. UBC history
professor Donald Kubesh and political science
professor Paul Tennant will discuss "The FLQ and
the War Measures Act" in a public meeting; fee is $1.
On March 15 a reading and study skills course for
businessmen and professional people will be launched
in Chilliwack. The course will involve a three-hour
session once a week for five weeks; fee is $60. Later,
on March 23, a day-long program entitled "New
Directions for Women" will be held in Prince George;
fee is $5 per person.
In early April a two-day program on "Pollution
and the Environment" is planned for Trail. Selkirk
College biologist Bruce Fraser and a yet-to-be
appointed UBC faculty member will participate in the
program. A music program with UBC music professor
Cortland Hultberg is also being planned for Vernon
this coming fall.
Other departments of the University also conduct
continuing education classes on a regular basis.
REFRESHER COURSES
Two years ago the Department of Continuing
Education in the Health Sciences was created to offer
courses to graduates in the various health fields.
Dentists in B.C. who previously had to travel to
Alberta, Washington or Oregon for professiona
courses in continuing education now have 1
seminars to choose from.
The continuing medical education division is
presently trying to update the knowledge of the
province's established doctors by projects which
range from an information bus that visits upcountry
towns to a program encouraging community hospitals
to run their own refresher courses. The Nursing and
Pharmacy continuing education divisions are also
offering an increasing number of courses to their
graduates.
Three programs in adult education are given by the
UBC Continuing Education Division of the Faculty of
Commerce and Business Administration.
NEW IDEAS
Continued from Page Seven
Department of Information Services produces a
weekly, half-hour program entitled UBC Now, which
utilizes the specialized knowledge of faculty members
for current affairs programs and documents various
facets of UBC life. The program is braodcast on
Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. over Channel 10 in Vancouver
and affiliated cable systems in other lower mainland
areas.
One of the communications channels the
association is most concerned to keep open lies
between the organization and the more youthful
segment of its own membership.
With one-quarter of its membership under the age
of 25, the association is aware that the generation gap
may make itself felt within the organization.
The association's response to the needs of its
young members has been the formation of The
Young Alumni Club — one of the most innovative
and well-received of the association's new programs.
The club began with Friday afternoon socializing
at Cecil Green Park, the Alumni Association's
beautiful headquarters on the campus. Membership is
open to graduates and students in their graduating
year.
More than 1,100 members flocked to join in the
social evenings which consist of food, dancing and
enthusiastic participation in elbow-bending exercises.
The club is rapidly becoming a new campus tradition
and has expanded this year to include Thursday
evenings.
Last, but not least, among the association's new
projects is the production of a new publication called
Guidelines which will provide high school students
and counsellors with a handy guide to educational
opportunities available beyond high school.
•
12/UBC Reports/Feb. 25, 1971

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